(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) The epidemic impacts China's gold production and consumption is expected to fully resume production in the second quarter
China News Agency, Beijing, April 28 (Reporter Liu Yuying) Affected by the epidemic, China's gold production and consumption both declined in the first quarter of 2020, and production is expected to return to normal in the second quarter.
According to statistics released by the China Gold Association on the 28th, China's domestic raw material gold output was 82.63 tons in the first quarter of 2020, which was a 10.14 ton reduction compared with the same period in 2019, a year-on-year decrease of 10.93%.
Affected by the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, the cumulative output of China's mineral gold from January to February fell 19.51% year-on-year. In March, as domestic epidemics eased and gold prices rose, key gold companies resumed production in an orderly manner, and the resumption rate quickly increased from 80% at the end of February to more than 98%. In March, national mineral gold production increased 5.55% year-on-year. Shandong Gold and Zijin Mining's output of mined gold increased against the trend in the first quarter.
Zhang Yongtao, vice president and secretary general of the China Gold Association, said that domestic gold production will return to normal in the second quarter.
In the first quarter of 2020, the actual national gold consumption was 148.63 tons, a decrease of 48.20% compared with the same period in 2019. Among them, 92.04 tons of gold jewelry, a year-on-year decrease of 51.06%; gold bars and gold coins 37.67 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 46.97%.
The decline in gold consumption is mainly due to the significant reduction in offline consumption due to the epidemic, which is compounded by the increase in the price of gold, and the consumption of gold jewelry and gold bars has been greatly affected.
In the epidemic, many retail enterprises carried out multiple forms of online marketing. The online sales of gold jewellery and the sales of some investment categories such as gold coins have increased, but they still cannot compensate for the decline in offline store sales. However, the industry believes that gold consumption is expected to gradually recover after the epidemic. (Finish)